Well folks, between the abhorrently hot and humid weather, baseball on TV, and Hollywood printing money from action movies, it’s safe to say we’ve officially entered Summer blockbuster season. No better way to usher in the season with one of the hottest film franchise from one of the hottest studios, with Marvel Studio’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I took the time out of my very busy schedule to watch it just so I could write this up at 1:16 am just in case any one out there is too dumb to realize a billion dollar film franchise is playing in theaters currently and they do in fact want your money.

GotG Vol. 2, like most other Marvel movies live up to the hype. It’s crazy the universe they’ve built where we’ve accepted and happily welcomed in a movie that features a talking racoon, a tree limited to 3 words, and people of races of so many colors you’d think racism in America was dead decades ago. Well what the first GotG movie did that I think people like about it was two things, it opened the doors and brought in higher concepts to the MCU with the cosmic world. We all know by now that this is all setting the stage for probably one of the largest blockbuster movie’s ever in The Avengers: Infinity Wars. They explored the idea of galaxy’s and other worlds, celestial beings, and learned more about the infinity stones and the creation of the universe for god’s sake. All very crucial to adapting how the rest of the MCU will fit in place when Infinity Wars come about. Well Vol.2 gave us a bit more of that by introducing a character like Ego the Living Planet. The idea and sense of power a Celestial being has and how it deals with the rest of the universe is pretty big consider we are going to eventually some how gonna see guy’s like Captain America and fucking Hawk-Eye some how deal with fighting a construct like that, but half the battle is established by translating a character like that on screen. I was pretty skeptical about how it was all going to work when the character is just a planet with a face on it in the comic books.

But Kurt Russel and James Gunn did a good job portraying that on screen actually translating him to a human form and how he’s connected with the planet and all that nonsense.

What Vol. 2 doubled down on, unfortunately though, was the humor of it all. The first one was the right amount of humor. This one kind of all comes across too jokey and kinda brings it down for me. Don’t get me wrong, the parts that are funny are funny but it’s just too much in the movie. The first one had just the right amount of humor from a guy like Drax. He didn’t say overly much in the first one so every time he had a nice subtle joke, he killed it. This one, all of his dialogue were written to be funny and kinda over does it for me. Every scene had to have some sort of joke to it, it feels like and it’s not a bad choice, but I would personally like it more if it scaled back and gave me some more world building dialogue that didn’t include a punch line.

Overall the movie was a solid 8 where most Marvel movies fall. Some people argue that the Villains in Marvel movies stink and to some degree it’s true, but a villain like Ego surely was better than Ronin with his motives and over all character. Ayesha, the gold lady,  was a bit of a water ever side plot villain but it definitely helped drive the plot. The plot itself isn’t very overly complicated but the movie is mostly character driven with characters like Ego, Starlord, Nebula, and definitely Yondu who kinda steals the show in Vol. 2. If you’re not savvy to all of what’s going on with Marvel movies you might not get what’s going on and it might be confusing to keep up, but even if you’re casually watching you should find it a fun watch with the humor and action. Not as good as the first one because its so hard to recreate the discovery and introduction to it all, but now immersed in this world, they do a good job trying to not fuck it up and showing a story that really stands alone that helps build the cosmic world for future films.

Now onto some discussion.

 

Ego’s CGI Transformations

From the second they stepped into Ego’s temple, I got the feeling the CGI was weird. Not the building or anything, but when he has those spheres that kinda display what ever he wants from the creation of him and the models of humans and stuff. It was all weird looking CGI. I mean they were just suppose to be projections so I didn’t think much of it. Just assumed they were clay-mation like projections that he can mold to show what ever. But I was appalled when I saw the CGI work they did when Ego and Peter fight. Hail of gun fire reigns on Ego to no avail only to show CGI of him rebuilding himself in a mixture of Dr. Manhattan in The Watchmen at first to then looking like early 2000’s CGI of Hollow man or even kind of like Ghost Rider quality CGI. Maybe it was just me but at the time, it looked kinda bad to me.

 

Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel

Do you think these 2 ever feel left out? I mean as an Actor I assume you want your face everywhere for publicity sake right? Yet almost all these P.R. photos Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel don’t show up ever at all

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I mean Bradley Cooper is an A list star and Vin Diesel is a crucial character in 2 Major billion dollar film franchises. I mean sometimes I even forget those 2 are in this movie. Especially in this one, baby Groot, no chance they dragged Vin Diesels muscular ass into the studios for this. They probably audio photo chopped his previous recordings so it sounds like its coming from a tiny tree guy. I mean If you’re getting paid what they’re getting paid, it’s hard to complain. Especially Vin Diesel who has 3 words total he has to say. but still, you gotta figure they’re kinda jealous they miss out on a lot of the spot light.

 

Starfox

I’m not savvy to all the modern day video games because I suck and don’t have the patience to play, but yo how dope was Star fox back in the day. Tell me you didn’t get a hint of that when you saw Rocket Racoon and Peter Quill navigating through an asteroid field with hundreds of the Sovereign fighter space ships on their tail gunning them down until they double spin through little honey comb like portals. They need to remake that for whatever systems they have now. Dopest dope.

 

Cheddar Bob

Shout out to Evan Jones for being apart of the Ravagers. Guy has one of those faces that is so recognizable I think. I mean I noticed him right away. With a stand out face like that you’d think he’d have more roles in Hollywood but then again maybe its because his face looks like that of a bum which is what he was in 8 mile and the Ravagers aren’t exactly deep characters either. He also looks like Jimmy Clausen. Bad look on his part.

Post Credit Scenes

FIVE post credit scenes. FIVE. 1,2,3,4,FiF. Honestly I’m getting a little sick and tired of these. GotG Vol.2 has them spaced out so it doesn’t seem to make the credits that long but either way, fuck that. Give me 1 post credit scene. 2 max. Either way, I’m not acknowledging any of these people who worked on the film. I bet if you’re a movie usher or one of those people who have to clean up you must hate the shit out of the post credit scenes because now everyone sits there an extra five minutes, which is five minutes until you can finish cleaning, which is five minutes more taken out of your life that inevitably makes you want to kill your self. And speaking of how it sucks doing that job….

 

Midnight Showings

How about the balls on my local theater showing the movie on a 24 hour schedule. At fist I thought it only ran to 3 am which is crazy in its own right, but when I went to go double check, this shit is playing for 24 hours straight. I can’t imagine waking up at 7 am on a Friday, drive to the movie’s and be awake and pay attention for 2 hours about a celestial being taking over the universe. Working a movie theater job sucks, but normally you deal with normal working hours. Having to work the 4 am shift in case insomniacs or a strippers just getting off work decides to watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is absurd.

Family- **Vin Diesel Voice**

Not gonna lie, kind of weird having the words spoken by a character not Vin Diesel when Vin Diesel’s in the movie. Its so ingrained in my brain that when Drax said it, it just didn’t feel right anymore.

P.s- Vin Diesel’s real name is Mark Sinclair. <—- This fact will eventually get scrubbed from the internet because I cant picture him not being called Vin Diesel/ Dominick Torreto

Microsoft’s Zune

What a relic from the past. I honestly don’t know why this didn’t take off. At the time the competition between Zune and iPod still resided to only a music listening device I think? ipods did have the brick breaker game and that alone might’ve been enough to out the competition because that game is fire. Either way, good to see it make a cameo in GotG 2. Great reminder of how much of a joke that was and how Apple pretty much rules the world now.

Brain Tumor

Seems very fitting all things considered when Peter Quill and the gang put a bomb essentially inside Ego’s Brain.